


Through time and space

by glaciya



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: (kinda), Betrayal, Cyberpunk, Dimension Travel, Dismemberment, Dragons, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Fantasy, Galra Keith (Voltron), Inuyasha Au, M/M, Magic, Meet-Cute, Past Keith/Kuron friendship, Pining Shiro (Voltron), Sci-Fi, Soulmates, This is truly the most self indulgent thing Ive ever written, Time Travel, bc I found a way to put That Scene from tbp in this don't judge me, breath of the wild AU, combining botw and inuyasha and dragons and sheith all in one, half-demon keith, idk if this combo will vibe with anyone else but i sure had a good time writing it!, that being said you don't have to be familiar with botw or inuyasha in order to enjoy this :)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-28
Updated: 2019-02-28
Packaged: 2019-11-07 04:53:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,146
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17953955
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glaciya/pseuds/glaciya
Summary: When a down on his luck Shiro makes a wish and finds himself crossing dimensions, he turns up in Altea, surrounded by magical creatures and ancient battles with a half-demon man named Keith as his only guide. Too bad Keith hates him on sight.-----Keith is on him in an instant, using his legs to pin Shiro’s arms to his sides and holding his dagger in the air above his head to strike.“No, wait!”“Shut up,” Keith grits, readjusting his grip on the dagger above him. “I’m going to kill you now.”Shiro squeaks.“I should make it slow.”“Hey.”“Make it hurt, the same way it did when you betrayed us.”“I think you should know-”“It’d be exactly what you deserve.”“But I’m not-”“SHUT UP! SHUT UP! SHUT UP!” Keith roars, but his expression isn’t angry anymore, it’s hurt. He’s looking at Shiro the same way he looked at Kuron after he sliced off his arm. The dagger drops to the ground with a heavy thud as Keith buries his head in his hands. His ears lie flat against his skull. “Dammit.”“Keith...”“Screw you, Kuron.”“That’s not my name,” Shiro says in a rush.





	Through time and space

**Author's Note:**

> Hello!  
> So, like the tags say, even though this story takes elements from both BOTW and Inuyasha you don't have to be familiar either of those to understand what's going on here :D  
> I just wanted Shiro from a cold, cyberpunk future stumbling across a fantasy-version of Keith and them having no idea what to do with each other <33  
> (I've only written sheith once before and it was a tiny drabble so I hope I did okay with the characters!)

“He fired you in the staff cafeteria?” Shiro smiles at the sound of Matt’s outrage through the phone. It’s nice to have someone on his side after all the borderline hateful looks he received from his coworkers as he passed by them on his way out.

“It was more of a gentle suggestion to turn in my resignation before he fired me,” Shiro says. He moves the phone from his left hand to his right, so the hand that’s susceptible to the chilly temperature can burrow into the warm interior of his coat pocket.

“All because you rejected his son at the dinner party?” Matt scoffs. “Shiro, we could take legal action against this you know. Or even go above him somehow. Get that old fart fired and have them put you in his place.”

“I honestly don’t think it’d be worth the time or effort it would take. I was never happy there. Now I have an excuse to leave it behind me.” Shiro sighs, watching his breath drift up in the air toward the cloudy sky. A drop of rain lands on his nose and he twitches slightly in surprise. 

“Okay, okay. Well, what if Pidge and I do a little hacking in our free time? Spread his porn search history around, ruin his entire social life. Ya know, little things like that.” Shiro can hear Matt’s grin.

“Now that I can get behind.” The drop on his nose becomes two, three, then four, spattering his cheeks and eyelashes. He glances back toward his self-driving car parked on the street. It’s not too far away, but the forest behind him is closer. 

“Well, come on home. We’ll order in, have some beers, and watch space documentaries while we plan this dude’s doom.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Shiro says, eyes on the outline of trees ahead of him. Lightning flashes in the sky, bright and angry. “I just have to make a quick stop first.” 

“What-” Thunder roars, cutting off Matt’s words. “Shiro, are you outside right now?”

“I won’t be long,” Shiro assures him, already picking up his pace into the woods. 

Matt breathes out a long, suffering sigh. “You’re at the park again about to visit that old tree aren’t you?” Shiro doesn’t reply, starting to jog as thunder sounds again, but his silence is an answer in itself. “I know you have that weird connection with it but that storm’s gonna be a rough one and it’s coming in fast. Just come home and we can go there together when the weather clears up tomorrow.”

“It has to be tonight,” Shiro says, that truth coming from somewhere deep within his heart. From the same place he’d felt light up the very first time he came across the old Bristlecone pine tree many years ago.

“Shiro-”

Shiro pulls the phone from his ear and shuts it off. He knows Matt will never understand. Shiro himself doesn’t understand it. 

All he knows is, from the first time he stumbled across the tree-sixteen and trying to find a safe place to sneak off to with his first boyfriend-he’d felt a sense of belonging, of home, whenever he was near it.  

He knows his way through the trees like he knows his way around his own flat. He could probably make it there with his eyes closed, should he ever want to challenge himself. Now though, with the rain pouring down on him and the wind threatening to throw him off balance, Shiro only wants to get there as soon as possible. 

Shiro finds the tree in a clearing in one of the few natural nature preserves left in the world. It’s protected by law and a technofield. Anyone can come and appreciate the still living remainder of ancient times, but as soon as anyone tried to harm the plant, alarms would sound, sending notice to the authorities. The Holts themselves had designed the technology for it, along with Shiro’s new right arm. 

The tree looks impossibly massive, just as he remembered it. The trunk itself is probably bigger than his entire flat and, even when he looks up as far as he can, the many, thick branches block out the sky and the rain. Shiro knows there must have been thousands of trees like this back when nature was left alone to thrive on it’s own. Now, Shiro’s Bristlecone pine is one of a few of it’s kind. 

It hasn’t lived entirely without a struggle though, Shiro thinks, pressing his palm to a cavity that expands from the roots to shoulder-height on Shiro. The wound is several inches  deep, revealing the brownish-red heartwood at the center. It’s been there since he very first saw it-right before his boyfriend turned him and pressed his back into the bark, the warmth that radiated from it distracting Shiro through his very first kiss. 

The familiar warmth flows through their connection now, up his arm and settles in his chest. Shiro sighs at the feel of it, and he wishes. Wishes he’d gone through with the urge to punch his boss-ex-boss he reminds himself-right in the face in front of all of his old co-workers. Wishes he’d never given so many years of his life working for a soulless company. Wishes there was something more that he-

The hairs on his arm stand up, quickly followed by the hairs on the back of his neck. It’s then he notices the forest around him has fallen suspiciously still. There’s no wind swaying tree branches and bending strands of grass. No rain splattering on the ground. Nothing. 

The warmth in his chest sharpens suddenly, grabbing ahold of his heart and pulling until Shiro’s metal hand comes up and grasps at his chest like he could fight off the feeling. As he struggles to breathe through it, he doesn’t think to move his flesh hand away from the pine. Later he’ll wonder if everything would have changed had he thought to do that and he’ll decide that he’s immeasurably glad it never crossed his mind. 

As he stares at the metal fist clasped against his chest he remembers a little joke Sam told him when Shiro went in for his final fitting a year ago. 

“It’s made from a metal we harvested from the cave systems in Mars you discovered during our research mission, ironically enough,” he’d said. “It’s durable enough to handle extreme temperatures and compression, so the only maintenance you’d need to worry about is system upgrades bimonthly. Just make sure you don’t spend too much time storm chasing with that thing.” 

Shiro blinked at him. “Why?”

“Why?” Sam gave Shiro a faux serious expression. “Because of the-”

_ Lightning _ , Shiro remembers suddenly and his head whips up toward the sky just in time to see a flash of white so bright it burns and blinds him, and then Shiro knows no more.

He wakes an indefinite time later with a gasp and the sensation that something is tickling his scalp, like a bug crawling through his hair. He scrambles into a sitting position, rubbing his hand furiously through his hair in a panic. Finding nothing, he turns to inspect where he’d been lying on his back and feels foolish when he sees a patch of long grass right where his head was resting. 

Bug threat averted, Shiro takes inventory of himself. He’s not quite sure how someone usually feels after being struck by lightning, but he’s pretty sure fine isn’t it. Maybe he fainted and the white light he saw was just him losing consciousness. It’s sunny now and his clothes are dry so he must have been out for awhile now. 

“Matt’s probably getting a search party ready to look for me now,” Shiro mutters, standing and brushing dirt off his pants. 

There’s a butterfly frozen mid air right in front of his face when he straightens. It’s wings are a soft pink and black, tilted upward in flight. Shiro stares at it, bewildered, and then, with a detached sort of curiosity, he reaches his hand out and touches it as gently as he can. 

As soon as his fingers make contact the butterfly’s wings flutter as it moves, flying around Shiro’s head and landing on his nose, making his eyes cross briefly before it takes off again. 

Shiro watches it fly through the forest with parted lips. “How hard did I hit my head?” he asks himself, bemused. 

He spins in a slow circle, trying to get his bearings. The forest around him looks different somehow. Wilder, he decides, looking at the overgrown grass and weeds and towering trees around. He’d always thought the forest looked sparse before, nearly bare except for thin grass and Shiro’s Bristlecone. Now it’s thriving, bright greens and deep earthy browns like Shiro has never seen before. Thriving but eerily still and silent, just like it was right before the white flash.

He spots the Bristlecone when he’s facing the opposite direction he originally stood up in, noticing immediately that the wound no longer sits in the middle of the trunk. With an odd sense of loss and panic, Shiro starts to make his way toward the other side of the tree, dragging his fingertips along the bark to feel that warmth again. 

He’s panting by the time he makes it to what he thinks has to be halfway around the tree, tripping over roots in his rush to find the crater that he knows has to be somewhere-"

His fingertips graze against something much softer than bark and Shiro stops himself so suddenly his foot tangles in a root and he twists to the side, face first into what should have been the Bristlecone’s trunk. Instead, he’s pressed against something incredibly soft and warm and  _ red _ , Shiro notes when he opens his eyes. 

Shiro straightens, pressing against the soft, warm, and red, so he can get a better look at whatever he fell against. 

And finds himself nose to nose with a man who happens to be wearing a bright red tunic.

“Oh! Sorry, I-” Shiro’s mouth snaps closed when he realizes several things about the man in quick succession.

The man is clearly asleep-eyes closed and breath even-and therefore can’t hear Shiro apologizing for accidentally face planting into his chest. 

He’s incredibly beautiful, with lashes that brush against high cheekbones,choppy bangs that frame his face while the longer strands in the back tumble down his shoulders, and pale lips. He would look almost delicate if not for the way his tight tunic and leggings show off the lean muscles in his torso, legs, and arms.  

The not-so-delicate, sleeping man also has lavender skin and large, fluffy bat-like ears peeking out through his dark hair, much to Shiro’s bewilderment. Again, he wonders exactly how hard he hit his head when he fell. 

And the last, most distressing, thing he notices is the large sword sticking through the man’s left shoulder. 

It’s blade is a dark grey with a black handle, lined with gold.  It’s huge, thicker and longer than Shiro’s own arm, and at least half it’s blade is piercing through the sleeping man.

“How can you still be sleeping right now?” Shiro reaches out to touch the handle and flinches back from it at the last second. Sunlight glints off the violet gem eye of the lion carved into the pommel, like it’s winking at him. 

“I mean, do you want me to-should I just…?” His hand hovers over the handle, almost touching but not quite yet. 

The sleeping man doesn’t move, just breathes soft and even despite the fact that he has been made into a shish kabob.

Shiro brushes his fingertips against the cool metal.  

The sleeping man snores softly at him.

Shiro lets his breath match up with the man in front of him, a deep inhale, a long exhale. He grasps the handle then, firmly to brace for pulling it out and suddenly-

_ Suddenly… _

_ Suddenly he’s right on top of the man-  _ **_Keith_ ** _ \- snarling down at him as his presses his sword -  _ **_Nightbringer_ ** _ \- down as hard as he can to rip and tear and, kill like he’s always been meant to.  _

_ The man-  _ **_Keith Keith Keith_ ** _ \- is shaking with the effort to keep Shiro’s sword away from his face. The dagger in his hands is so small compared to Shiro’s blade.  _

_ “ _ **_Kuron_ ** _ , please,”  _ **_Keith_ ** _ grunts, and somehow that name sparks recognition in Shiro, just as his own would.   _ **_Keith_ ** _ ’s eyes, unique and beautiful like the rest of him, have fear and desperation in them. It has Shiro fighting as hard as he can to back off, but- “You’re my brother,” -his body won’t list to him, like a passenger along for the ride all he can do is watch helplessly as something twisted makes him want to destroy the man beneath him.  “I love you!” _

_ And, oh, does the man controlling Shiro’s body hurt in that moment.  _

_ A memory that’s not Shiro’s flashes in front of his eyes. He’s sitting in a meadow with a younger, happier Keith than the one pinned below him in the forest. The meadow is familiar, as is their meeting, like they’ve snuck off together several times before this. _

_ “I can’t believe you weren’t scared at all when Black when swooped down like that!” Keith uses his hand to imitate the downward arch of a fall, curving up the moment before his fingertips touch the grass. “If Red did that to me I’d think I was going to die.” _

_ “Black would never do anything that would hurt me. I trust him, and he trusts me. That’s what all those bonding exercises are for. Once you and Red get through them, you’ll outfly all the rest of us.” _

_ Keith looks doubtful. He opens his mouth to speak, freezing when something catches his eye and then breaking out into a smile. “Oh look. There they are now.” _

_ Kuron follows Keith’s gaze up toward the sky just as something huge flies over them, blocking out the sun. He spots a flash of red and black, a glimpse of wings, and- _

_ “Just let go Keith,” he growls, pressing down as hard as he can. His sword starts to glow a bright violet and Shiro panics because deep down he knows this will be the killing blow.  “You don’t have to fight anymore. By now, the team’s already gone. I saw to it myself.” _

_ Keith yells, and a flash of light blinds Kuron for one critical second.  _

_ When his vision clears he’s on his knees, something warm and wet seeping into his right side and dripping down his leg. He feels oddly lopsided and lightheaded.  _

_ Keith stands a little ways away from him,  watching him with tears and a thousand questions in his eyes. His dagger, now a sword, lengthened and wickedly curved, hangs limply by his side. Kuron’s sword and right arm, blackened and clawed thanks to Haggar’s magic, lay in the space between them.  _

_ “Keith,” Kuron chokes, vision blurring.  _

_ There’s an explosion off to their left, close enough that the ground shakes beneath them and they can hear the pained roar that follows it. Blue, Kuron thinks apathetically, she must be the last of them that hasn’t been corrupted yet. He knows Haggar will see to her soon.  _

_ Blue’s pained cries distract Keith and he makes the mistake of looking away from Kuron, toward the sound.   Kuron takes advantage, lunging forward to grab his sword with his left hand. He runs, pulling his arm back and throwing it forward as hard as he can.  _

_ As soon as Nightbringer leaves his finger tips Kuron falls forward again,  no strength left in him to stand. He fights to keep his gaze on Keith and Nightbringer, needing to know if he’ll finish his mission before the blood loss kills him.  _

_ The sword twirls through the air, glowing violet as it nears Kuron’s target. Keith turns too late, eyes widening in shock as the blade pierces through his shoulder. The force of the impact knocks Keith off his feet and he falls back, into the large tree behind him as Kuron’s knees slam to the ground. _

_ A woman cries out then, devastated and desperate and dangerous.  _

_ “NO!” she screams, and just before Kuron’s eyes roll back he sees a pink, glittering light raise up from the ground and he feels an ancient power magic seep through the air in the forest around them. _

 

Shiro comes back to himself with a gasp and locks eyes with a very awake and very angry Keith.

“Kuron,” he growls. “Let me go.”

Shiro’s grip is firm on the now familiar handle of Nightbringer. “I...I’m not-”

Keith twitches forward and then flinches at the pain the movement causes him.

“Wait a second-”

“Pull it out so we can fight for real this time, you coward!”

“I don’t want a fight!"

“You’re getting one!”

“Can’t we just talk about-”

“Get your sword out of me. Right. Now.”

Shiro eyes the point of contact between the blade and Keith’s shoulder. “Do you think it’s safe to-"

Keith growls, actually growls, like an angry dog and Shiro, figuring that’s as much as a green light as he’s going to get, takes a deep breath to steady himself, and pulls. 

He either underestimates the strength of his prosthetic or overestimates how deeply stuck the sword is in both Keith and the tree, because it takes little effort at all for the sword come out. Shiro stumbles, tripping on roots and tumbling down onto his back as the sword slides free.

Keith is on him in an instant, using his legs to pin Shiro’s arms to his sides and holding his dagger in the air above his head to strike. 

“No, wait!”

“Shut up,” Keith grits, readjusting his grip on the dagger above him. “I’m going to kill you now.”

Shiro squeaks.

“I should make it slow.”

“Hey.”

“Make it hurt, the same way it did when you betrayed us.”

“I think you should know-”

“It’d be exactly what you deserve.”

“But I’m not-”

“SHUT UP! SHUT UP! SHUT UP!” Keith roars, but his expression isn’t angry anymore, it’s hurt. He’s looking at Shiro the same way he looked at Kuron after he sliced off his arm. The dagger drops to the ground with a heavy thud as Keith buries his head in his hands. His ears lie flat against his skull. “Dammit.”

“Keith...”

“Screw you, Kuron.”

“That’s not my name,” Shiro says in a rush, grinning when he manages to finish the sentence without Keith interrupting him. The grin drops when Keith drags his hands away from his face to stare at Shiro.

“What.”

“My name is Takashi Shirogane. I worked for a travel agency selling vacation packages to Mars to people much wealthier than me until noon today, which is when my boss fired me because I had politely told his son that, no, I did not want to spend my saturday night listening to him drone on and on about how awesome he thinks he is until the end of the night in which he inevitably asks me insistantly for a blow job that I do not want to give, no sir. And, while I did daydream about a scenario in which my boss died rather violently on my drive from work after he fired me, I most certainly have never betrayed or killed anyone.”

Keith blinks slowly at him. “I’m having a hard time understanding any of what you just said. Who is Mars? Why do they want you to give them your blow job? Is that a weapon?”

Shiro sighs. “Well, did you get that my name is Shiro, not Kuron? Because I think that’s the most important thing to take from all of this.”

Keith’s lips curl in a snarl and Shiro sees  _ fangs _ . “You are not foolish enough to think a haircut and a change into strange clothes could disguise you from me. Even if you didn’t look like yourself, I could still smell you. Cool steel, rain, and...sweets?” His nose scrunches up as he leans down, until they’re almost nose to nose, and inhales. “You’ve never smelled  _ sweet  _ before.”

“You’ve never smelled  _ me _ before.” His tone isn’t as sharp as he’d like it to be. Something about staring into Keith’s blue-violet eyes takes away any irritation he might have had at being pinned down and threatened. Instead, much to Shiro’s disbelief, his face starts to heat up in a blush. He watches as Keith exhales and immediately inhales again like he can’t help it. His cat-like pupils dilate moments before he leaps back from Shiro as if he’d been burned.

Shiro sits up as soon as he’s able, eyes tracking Keith as they both straighten, but Keith doesn’t try to pounce him again. A deep, instinct rises inside him, one that Shiro is sure isn’t his own, and nearly has him reaching for the handle of Nightbringer, laying only a few feet from him. Shiro ignores it, clenching his hands into fists as he stands. He’s already lived through Kuron’s memory of hurting Keith once, he’s not sure if his heart could take it if he did it again.

He sees the reason for Keith’s sudden retreat as soon as he takes his eyes off the man. A glittering pink fog is slowly rising from the ground and into the air around the clearing, the very same that had taken over during Kuron and Keith’s fight. And, when the woman speaks, Shiro recognizes that too from Kuron’s vision of the clearing.

“Keith,” she says. “Keith, he isn’t your enemy.”

“Princess? What-” Keith swallows. He looks pained. “What did you do?”

“What I had to. We were losing, Keith. Once Haggar’s magic began to corrupt the dragons, they turned against us and Zarkon’s forces overwhelmed us. Kuron’s betrayal was the fatal blow.”

“We lost then.” Keith scowls at Shiro and Shiro fights the urge to remind him that he is not Kuron, no matter how much Keith thinks they look alike. 

“Not quite.” The voice from the mist lets out a soft, tinkling laughter. “You’ll be proud, I’m sure, to know I unlocked the magic within me at the very last possible second and finally became of some use in the fight against Zarkon. I froze time in both the castle where I was fighting Haggar and in the forest where your battle with Kuron took place moments before we both died. It’s been frozen for a century now, waiting until it was time for us to strike back.”

Keith is silent, needing a minute to process this. Though, he recovers sooner than Shiro, speaking while Shiro’s mind is still reeling from beautiful men with  _ bat ears _ and  _ cat eyes _ and a _ pink mist _ talking of  _ dragons _ and  _ magic _ .  

“This man...he’s not Kuron? Or some form of him?”

“No,” Shiro and Allura both say at the same time. 

Allura continues, “He’s from a different reality than ours. I’ve been calling through time and space waiting on someone to wake you from my spell and, finally, this man answered me. I suspect his soul and Kuron’s must have been connected somehow to allow for the switch. You’re able to wield Nightbringer, yes?”

Realizing Allura must be talking to him, Shiro nods. Then, realizing he’s not quite sure if the woman talking through the mist can actually see him, Shiro says, “Yes. I saw something when I held it too. I think it was Kuron’s memory of the night him and Keith fought.” Keith’s face twists and Shiro is quick to add, “I didn’t want to hurt you! I tried to stop him!”

“It’s alright, Shiro,” Allura says. “Kuron died that day in the clearing. My magic didn’t touch him and he died of blood loss not long after the spell was complete.”

“Good,” Keith says, voice hollow. In a blink the sadness washes away and his expression becomes one of grim determination. “So what now? How do we stop Haggar once and for all?”

 

As Shiro listens to Allura’s instructions for five champions to wake five dragons and fight off an evil witch named Haggar’s corruption in epic battles to come, he tries to think about things rationally.

_ Rationally _ , drugs somehow were slipped into his system and he’s hallucinating everything.

_ Rationally _ , this day has never even happened and he’s been asleep this whole time, having one really long fucked up dream.

_ Rationally _ , lightning could have struck him in that clearing and he could be dead and this is some form of afterlife that he’s now in.

_ Rationally _ , even if this were all real he should be trying to figure out how to get back home as soon as possible.

But, as Keith gives him a small, hesitant smile and offers him a hand, Shiro decides rationality is overrated. 

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally supposed to be a little thing but I have no self control and a ton of ideas for this au (I'd really like to see Keith come to Shiro's world at some point and I'd like to see allurance happen here) so I might be coming back to this at some point :) Anyway!
> 
> Thanks for reading! If you liked this, feel free to leave a comment and/or a kudos!  
> You can also find me screaming about fandom stuff at  
> [Tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/glaciya) and [Twitter!](https://twitter.com/glaciiya)


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